Requiem
by Cynical Chaos
Summary: The wandering childe returns home.
1. Chapter 1

Requiem

by Cynical Chaos

I don't own Hellsing, all opinions, thoughts, etc. are my own, blah, blah, blah.

This is the sequel to my other Hellsing fic with Seras Victoria. The one whose name I can't be bothered to remember right now. But you know it don't you? Cause you're my loyal fans. Right? Thought so.

_There is, within an ancient manor, a place deeper and darker than all the others hidden beneath its timeless stones; one darker even than the one that a young Integra Wingates Hellsing crawled on all fours to reach. This place, a sub-basement or vault of sorts, has been sealed by a master craftsman. This is a blatant fact to all that have eyes that see. Look at the doors. They are magnificently wrought of a pale, silvery metal and are set at a forty-five degree angle to the ceiling. The design serves to give the viewer the impression that they are much thicker than they look. And while the doors themselves are indeed superb, an equally fantastic locking mechanism is nowhere to be found. However this is not an oversight of the architect, but rather a deliberate attempt to prevent any access to the vault below it. A door that is never intended to be opened has no need for a lock, and, indeed, an adroit observer would notice that there are no hinges either. The positions of the doors are a careful balancing act, for the slightest upset of either of the four foot thick doors will cause both to fall from their settings into the corridor below, completely sealing it._

_The gates alone should make one think twice about attempting to enter such a vault, but sometimes the more one seeks to hide something from the face of man, the more eagerly it is sought out. And such is the case of this vault and its contents. But the doors are not the only entrance, as any intrepid thief will be quick to tell you. The room has a rather unusual feature for any subterranean location: a window. The window is a simple device, cut out of more than seventy feet of earth and solid rock and allow only light in to the room. Should anyone try to enter using this means, and he would have to be very determined or psychotically obsessed to try this entrance, he or they would find the window pane itself a formidable challenge. Constructed of a specially treated bullet resistant and polarized glass, the pane is a one foot cube. Its sole purpose is to, by way of a cunning maze of mirrors, to shed as much daylight into the vault below for as long as possible._

_This vault seems an unconquerable task for any human thief, but humans were the last thing that came to the architect's mind during its construction. This strong-room, this crypt, acts as a place of rest for a collection of the most blasphemous and heretical written works known to Christendom. All presenting an alternative history to what men know, or think they know, as the truth. All written by vampires. They were the threat that the first Lord Hellsing feared when he ordered the renovation of the vault-crypt. It was this fear that drove him to create the labyrinth of catacombs and corridors underneath the manor. And it was that same fear that later drove his descendant to seal a being that could be argued as his greatest creation in those dank depths. All this for a single room with barely a dozen books. As for the history of renovating that goes back a long time. The room itself is over three hundred years old, and the various vampire hunters that owned the manor above and knew of the existence of the books modified it as they saw fit. _

_All save for one. He owned the manor and oversaw a force of soldiers and mercenaries, whom he trained and equipped to hunt and kill Midians and their minions. As the others before him, he learned of the vaults existence and sought to bar entrance from any and all who sought its contents and the profane knowledge within. However, this man's knowledge of the vault began when a cult of vampires attacked the manor. This incident resulted in the deaths of many of his men as the vampires attempted to gain access to the rooms below the foundation, which at that time where merely no more than simple strong-rooms designed to hold items such as weaponry and the payment for the men. Having superior numbers and the latest of weaponry, the humans won. Eventually. The aftermath was simple and bloody, and the remaining vampires were subdued and interrogated. And thus the existence of a room containing what the cultists described as, "The true history of the vampire nation" came to light and to the utter obsession of this man's thoughts. He did not seek the power contained in the tomes (that man came much later when the Hellsings came to power in England), instead he tried to ensure that an event similar to what had decimated his men and home. In this mindset he tried to destroy the tomes and found that his predecessors had indeed created an impervious vault. The doors and the window, the only known entrances, completely blocked his passage and tunneling was soon found to be an exercise in futility. But he rallied after several months of wasted effort and reasoned that, if the tomes could not be destroyed, the evidence of their existence must vanish. To that end he destroyed or altered any and all records of the books, and in the process, hunted down and destroyed many of the authors as well. Over the site of the window, he planted a grove of trees in such a way that they would obscure the window, but not the sunlight. The underground passages leading to the doors of pale silver metal were collapsed and filled in. All this for one room._

_And it was all this that Seras Victoria had discovered upon her return to jolly old England. This room she had seen in her dreams and sought during the waking moments of night. She had traveled long and studied hard, just to find this room. And, for the most part, she had done so without even realizing it. Upon her freedom so long ago, she had felt lost, felt an incredible wanderlust greater even than her hunger. She sought out other vampires, looking for an existence with more meaning than just simple bloodlust. And she had been disappointed. But in her travels, she found vague references to annals and histories of vampires, internal monologues and autobiographies. These she eagerly hunted and quested for in the hopes that they would serve to give her life meaning. And so, like all prodigal children, she came back home._


	2. Introit

Requiem

Introit

by Cynical Chaos

To: The Big W, concerning your reply to my reply of your most excellent piece of fiction (you know the one). Pat yourself on the back because thanks to a comment of yours regarding life and cynics, my higher brain functions (those not involving hunger, sleep, watching/critiquing anime and gaming) and my muse have finally decided to speak to one another once more.

To: My Readers (all one of you), concerning the continuation of **Requiem.** It will indeed continue and, grace permitting, will have four more chapters. Maybe, maybe not, it all depends on how long my inspiration lasts. Also, seeing as how a friend of a friend of a fiend is borrowing my Hellsing discs, can anyone give my any physical data about the Hellsing manor and its surrounding grounds? Just want to be accurate. It's not like I really care or anything.

To: I do not own or profit from the use of my piece of fiction concerning the characters and the actions within this facsimile of the Hellsing world, nor do the thoughts, philosophies and outright cynicisms in this piece of fiction offer insight into the minds of the creators of the Hellsing world.

That said, let us begin.

_ She stood, not taller for biological processes cease for the undead, but, perhaps, straighter and more sure of herself. She stood in a copse of trees. She stood some two hundred yards behind the Hellsing manor. She stood, finally back at home in jolly old England, and she did not know why. Oh, she knew why she stood _here_ in this place, but she did not know what she stood for, if she stood for anything. That had been taken from her long ago when her master, no, when Alucard, or Dracula or Khazkli Bey or Vladimir or whatever his real name was had freed her. Just like that, she was cut off, set adrift in a world she knew nothing about. And to make matters worse, she had promptly found herself on the run. Apparently, Lord Hellsing took a dim grim view on vampiress' who slipped their master's control. Or that is what she supposed. She didn't really know for certain. She had been running too fast to really be sure. That was one thing she had learned, though, from a battered old man in a grubby red robe with a hat that had 'wizard' misspelled with an extra 'z', is to never look back. When you're running for your life, you don't want to look back, because you won't be able to see where you're running to. And looking back at one's pursuers, doesn't help any._

_ But, in spite of the past, here she was, once again. Bereft of a higher purpose, older, stronger, but not much wiser. Or so _he_ would say. "Little prodigal child, finally come home," or something like that. She could never really be too sure, his mind and thoughts changed so easily. But, even as these thoughts swam through her mind, one surfaced and stole her attention: she was dithering. She was dithering and she knew it. So she dithered and whined to herself and tried her hardest not to think of the enormous glass window and the mirrors so cunningly wrought by humans hands to illuminate that which was below. She tried not to think of it and failed because a construct of so much magic acted as a whirlpool to human consciousness. And to inhuman consciousness as well, though not as a buzzing that existed at the edge of hearing. It was like having a tooth in her brain, a gnawing aching pain that excluding any form of thought, save to dumbly stare at it. So she did. She did and she concentrated on her growing powers, willing a little of the fresh blood into her eyes, wincing as she did so._

_ She had found that the consumption of blood, fresh blood, not only animated her form and strengthened her limbs, but seemed to gain a mystical power as it swam through her form. And she found that she could control the red river, directing to through her body and becoming stronger because of it. The strange power that came with the blood of, perhaps, because of it, had made her form more mutable. Or so it felt to her. She could indeed turn into mist, maintaining conscious thought somehow, and she could turn into a panther, or any large cat whose body mass was similar to her own. Which lent a whole new dimension to her once past thoughts of weight gain and loss. Though for some reason, she had gained a whole new fear of bats. She couldn't turn into one. One or a hundred. It didn't matter the number but bats and creepy-crawlies of any sort were not permitted to her from shifting powers. She secretly blamed her former master for this. Not that she really wanted to turn into a swarm of squirming wriggling things. So. Cats and mist and a bizarre new form of sight. The latter was a rather new trick she had found her blood could perform. Sight without light, and the magic powers in and of the world took substance and form before her eyes. Auras, spell weaves, wards of all shapes and functions appeared before her. And with this knowledge came the tricks needed to defeat them. Incantaions, meaningless (to her) words and phrases, dancing around under the crescent moon naked on the first of January wearing a garland of holly berries freshly plucked... All became clear to her through her sight._

_ Which is why she dithered and stood around looking foolish before this seemingly harmless and rather boring looking window. Because she saw. Or, rather, Saw. And what she saw would have made any sane man, and more than a few of the more stable crazies, pause in thoughtful consideration. Before her and slightly above and all through the window was a chaotic twisting mess of spell work. Normally spells became clear before her eyes, each separate and unique with their purposes all neatly sorting under her vision. These spells... acted less like iron gates and columns of fire and more like a river of paints with the larger, stronger spells diving in and out of the flow like big, abstract, surrealistic sharks. It looked like someone had taken H.R. Giger, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, put them on an acid trip and told them to paint what they saw. She studied what few she could see accurately and found them to be wards of repulsion, signs of sealing and runes of holy power. All twisted about on each other, their original forms only barely retained. She sighed and, seeing as there was no other option but to go home and have a nice cuppa, she transformed. Though there were no witnesses what so ever thanks to magicks, had there been any, they would have seen a young woman of average height with blondish hair and large red eyes become a blur. Not all at once, because Victoria had found that trying to transform to quickly was a painful process that made turning back even more difficult. So, a little at a time. Mildly blurred at first, and then more and more pronounced as the seconds wore on. Now colors began to merge together and the edges of her being became ... less there. It was difficult to see where exactly she was in the night. And even as her edges faded and mixed with the sudden ground fog, her center, her core began to vanish as well. The fog rolled towards the window and, finding no resistance from the spells, covered the window entirely and seeped through._

_ It was dusty inside the book room. Dusty and obscenely bright. As bright as day, which explained the young woman sitting in a cluster of books alternating between rubbing her head and her backside and cursing fluently in Spanish and Arabic. After assuaging the various aches and embarrassments away she looked around. She didn't stand because she didn't think that she would have been able to. The room she was in was huge. Enormous. Gigantic. Monolithic. Cavernous. These words ran through her mind, looked out through her eyes and slunk away humiliated. The room, whose window she had spotted through a used pair of binoculars atop the Hellsing ruins earlier that night, had seemed a small intimate little room holding maybe a handful of bookcases. Something she could expect to flip through and complete in a matter of hours. The truth of the book room... was a daunting task now that she was truly inside it and seeing it for what it really was. There was not a small collection of bookcases, there was only two. Two that stretched on to either side of her and ran out to a distant horizon. What little floor space there was, was covered in books. And more than just books, there were tomes a hand span thick, ancient grimoires marinading in their own dust, stacks and piles and minor floods of scrolls, octavos covered in smooth leather like human skin chained to squat pedestals broader than she was tall, and more. _

_ She looked and, seeing the room really was as big as it was, stood and stepped daintily out of the pile she was in. Seeing as there wasn't a librarian, reference card stack or even helpful little numbers on the bookcases, Seras Victoria started walking with the hopes that something would appear to show her the way. And a way did she find. But not the way she wished. It occurred thusly: Seras Victoria walked the shelves of books, stepping around the occasional book fallout, around the pillars of books and the pillars for the books. As she stepped around the ninth pillar into a narrow hall of paper, she slipped and fell. After a few more fluent curses flew away into the tomb of words, she hauled herself to her feet and looked at the obstruction. It was a banana. An old banana. Why there was a browning fruit in this place she did not know but she did know that she had gone full circle. Dead ahead was the pile that had broken her fall when the daylight magic of the room had cut her out of her mist form. She was right back where she had begun. And there was no way out. She certainly hadn't seen anything like a door in her meanderings._

_ With no exit in sight and the daylight magicks wearing on her, she sat in a huff of dust, annoyance and exhaustion. Looking around, she gave a mental shrug and grabbed the nearest book that looked interesting and looked like it wouldn't dump a metric ton of its others on her. Looking at it, she saw that it was just a plain book. Simple leather (cow leather, taken from two year old heifer, her sensitive fingers told her) binding, perhaps a hundred pages of cheap paper. Opening it, she looked at the title page._

The Life, Death and After-Life Of a Self ProclaimedCynic and Vampire

"Concerning my life, I have little to say save that it was sane, safe, and utterly boring. But you are not reading this for details of my life, are you now dear reader? No, of course you aren't. Your life is most likely similar to that which was my own not so long ago. And if you're looking at this book of memoirs for some interesting tips on what I did to make it more interesting, kindly look somewhere else.

Still here? Good, cause I'll talk your ears off. But before we begin, let's have us a definition shall we? We shall? Good.

Cynic: according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is a person who believes that all people are motivated by selfishness OR a person whose outlook on life is scornfully and habitually negative. I happen to be both. So when a beautiful young woman with smoldering eyes came to me one night at a bar and offered me the night of my life, I wondered to things: how much, and what's the catch. Oh, and how much will I have left on me, I wondered that too. Nevertheless, here I am, undead, unhappy, and seriously annoyed with the rest of the world. I wonder if a misanthrope can both ways..."

_  
It went on like this for several more pages, written in a spidery, rambling scrawl. It did however, in the later pages, offer several unique insights to her current condition and suggested a ritual that claimed to temporarily turn a vampire back into a human, or at least make a vampire look human. As she closed the book, it writer's bitter complaints and bizarre speculations echoing in her mind, she wondered, again, how she would leave this place. And more to the point, how she would recover her expended strength. There had been a fascinating little cantrip for one seeking blood, she'd have to try that later. But for now..._


End file.
